Murdering Her Name
by Chyme for the Rhyme
Summary: An onmyouji captures a kitsune and inflicts a name upon her. But this name is not Youko and the onmyouji in question, isn't Kantarou. It's Mai.
1. Chapter 1

My attempt to give Mai a happy ending. Of sorts. Eventually.

* * *

She will remember this forever; walking through forest trails that should not have betrayed her, lifting leaves into a crisp, uncluttered snap as her paws touch the ground. And her snout, a peak of fur that ends in a curve, lowering to the water below.

And then; the moment when it happens. A crunch through leaves far from her feet, a rustle in a waiting bush. She lifts her head, and ignores the gleam of her reflection to stare straight into another, steadier shine. They flicker, a quick slide of skin revealing them to be eyes as they blink. And then the human girl's head lifts, her head tearing free of the foliage, as the twigs scatter from her hair as though she is bursting from a stream. But the branches she snaps and the bark she scraps against in her excitement let out a welcome crack, one as high and sharp as a splash.

The kitsune will remember, afterwards, bearing her teeth and snapping, marooned in the air by her panicked leap as words spill from the girl's lips, made high and shrill with excitement. She will remember straining forward, each syllable bringing a light to life as it wraps through fur and tightens against muscles that now hang, heavy as rope beneath her skin. And she will remember snarling, snarling like a plead as she is clawed into a new creature, one that will need more than fur and the quick flicker of her shape to indentify her.

'I name you, Miyabi,' the girls finishes, and if there is low intensity to her voice, as she utters the name and lets it settle in the air, the youkai doesn't notice.

Instead the light disappears and Miyabi falls headfirst into the water, with a yelp unbecoming of her age.

* * *

Mai is the name of her new master. She tests it out in her head as they start the walk back to the shrine; _Mai, Mai, Mai_. She imagines it will sound rough against her tongue, as it scrapes past teeth instead of fluttering freely to roll.

Mai – her master – makes a face, her hand curling through her hair and then tightening with a squeeze. Miyabi watches as hair gleams wetly through human fingers, like oil trying to slip free of a bowl. It looks dark to her, darker than the space she sees between trees, places she has always felt safe.

There will be no more of that now.

'I'm all wet.' Mai turns to her with a petulant frown on her face. 'You're dripping on me. Stop it.'

Miyabi sighs, takes a few steps back. Her human form towers over Mai, tall, though not quite high enough to be one of her well-loved trees. It is one of the few good things she can take pleasure in. That, and the spite of making thin trails of dark material spring up and snake through the red kimono that wavers before her like a makeshift peony lantern. She straightens her spine and shakes herself abruptly, much like a dog.

Mai bites out a yell and shields her face with a sleeve. Seconds later, it lowers, revealing a tight glare on a pretty face.

'Sorry Mai- _chan_ ,' says Miyabi, carefully keeping her voice as blank as possible.

Mai reddens, her frown turning into a glare. It is like a thousand snakes have come to life in her brow, twisting the muscles there into hard, heavy coils.

'You will not call me that,' she hisses.

Miyabi smiles thinly. 'I meant no disrespect. Master.'

The frown falls away, not completely, but now Mai's forehead is less a nest of snakes, and more of a rumpled piece of skin.

'No,' says Mai, 'no, that's not-' she hesitates. 'Call me Mai,' she says firmly. 'That and nothing else. I have more than enough idiots crowding me at home, pretending to be my servants.' She spins on her heel and walks off, her feet, this time, coming down a little more firmly onto the ground.

Miyabi watches her, watches the water drip from her sleeves and from the ends of her hair and thinks she would make a good ghost.

* * *

It only later that she understands what Mai means by 'idiots.' The people in her village fawn over her, dragging themselves behind her heels while conversely throwing their shadows into her path. All this, while sweets come bubbling from their hands, gleaming like thick red jewels, while praises and pleas both fall through the air with equal fever. Mai treads through them all as though she expects the sound to bend and break away from her, as though the surrounding flesh, and the fake shine of the villagers eyes, cannot possibly leave their mark on her soul.

Miyabi is not sure how she tolerates it. She, herself, has spent her life walking through forests, pulling her tail through both shadows and crisp smells that change with the fluency of the wind. And yet all that seems uncluttered in comparison. For even if Mai does not have to watch out for stray branches or thorns, there is something here, in this press of people, that could snag at her heels, trip her up with little to no effort at all.

It is in these few seconds, that Miyabi suddenly feels a glimmer of respect for her new master.

* * *

'What have you done?'

Mai's mother is a lean woman, her face gaunt with lines that add to her beauty rather than rendering it strange and unattainable. Her nails, when Miyabi looks, are short and riled with strange, jutting tears, as though she taken to grinding them down against something hard and unforgiving.

'It's alright, Mother,' says Mai a little crossly. 'I named her. She's harmless now.'

Oh-ho, thinks Miyabi, is that so?

'But...' her mother trails off, her face now wrecked with anxiety. Her hair, while still shimmering with the tell-tell lusciousness of long-lasting youth, is caught in a half-formed twist at the back of her neck, strands spilling out of the contours in a messy wave.

This, thinks Miyabi, is a woman who has had one too many sleepless nights.

'Mother,' says Mai, this time with an edge to her voice. 'I am learning to be the best priestess I can possibly be. But...as I once proved, we do not have adequate protection against any dark spirits that would nestle their way into our homes.' She takes a breath. 'I need any advantage I can get, before I am strong enough to tell the fakers apart from the more benevolent sort.'

Mai's mother twists her lips. 'If it will make you happy...' She shoots a sharp look at Miyabi and then says vehemently: 'she's not sleeping in the house.'

'Fine,' says Mai stoutly. 'I'm sure she'll find some cover outside. She's used to it after all.' She turns. 'Come along Miyabi.'

Her mother lets out a low groan at the name, her hands dropping to her sides as her face lowers, the fight abruptly falling out of it.

Miyabi narrows her eyes. For just a second, she sees Mai wince, her shoulders bunching up into tight, angular lines that form a more squarish shape than usual. But then they drop, as though her kimono sleeves have suddenly become heavier than before.

Miyabi wonders what other weights this household holds, and whether she will ever see the secrets they keep.

* * *

It is not all as terrible as Miyabi fears. The earth, though it is crammed with human scents, still stirs beneath her feet in much the same way the forest floor does, and she watches as the wind urges the leaves to creep against the ground, to surge forward in the familiar dance of red, brown and gold. They unfurl like fire against her fur, and then break, with the same sweet, crisp sounds when Miyabi bats them with her paws.

'Don't run away,' Mai had told her fiercely, before she had pulled the door of her house closed. 'That's an order. You got that?'

Miyabi does but she can't help but shiver as the wind pulls against her fur. She is no leaf to be swayed and pulled to thinly sliced ribbons, but there are no trees here, not out in this wide open space. Just paths made out of cool stone blocks and empty, empty dirt. Nothing to stop the wind from barrelling through, to divide the full force of its scorn. It runs straight through her body and robs her of her warmth.

Dimly, she registers a prickle in her nose. Something warm, but small, barely enough to hold up in this onslaught of air, but it calls to her, and to the hunger in her belly. She lets it pull her closer to the shrine, dragging her the last few inches towards Mai's window. And there, beneath the sill, lies a plate, filled to the brim with deep fried tofu.

Miyabi's ears perk up. Her tongue hangs out. And then she lunges forward, swallowing down each mouthful with a watery gulp, joy rushing up to her head in the same way heat flows down to engulf her stomach. She closes her eyes and basks in the thin layer of breadcrumbs that roll crisply in her mouth before they crumble away into the softness beneath. It feels tender and slick, much like the entrails of a fish, but is better by far, than any silver thing that slips through streams.

She is thankful, when she looks up, to see that Mai is not there, watching her. For she will never be, she tells herself, grateful.

* * *

Mai is not stupid. She is ignorant. But she learns quickly from the books she holds in her hands, her eyes flickering over the words with an eagerness that seems almost child-like. But these same eyes are wide and dark, and look half-crazed in the light that her candle throws out. She reminds Miyabi of the frenzy she's seen some of her fellow youkai fall under and the way in which they watch the red run out from under their claws, entranced more by the colour than the marks they leave behind.

But these books, informative as they are, have been crafted by human authors and inevitably, they are missing things.

She remembers snorting, once, when Mai had recounted to her, rather excitedly, the tale of the _Tamamo-no-Mae._

'Oh-ho,' she says, letting the snarl enter her voice, 'an evil trickster, was she? A malevolent beast who expressed her power for the hell of it? Is that why she was stupid enough to make the emperor waste away, instead of arranging a quick, clever accident? These stories are always expressing how intelligent she was, how she amazed these great scholars...if that's so, why couldn't she manage that? Why risk her indentify by giving these people around the emperor enough time to grow suspicious of her?'

Mai looks rather shaken by her venom. Dimly, Miyabi suspects that the human had felt a kinship with _Tamamo_ , with this brilliant lady who wormed her way into the heart of a king and expressed no shame for doing so. She wonders if, any minute now, that shaken look will iron itself out, this time into a frown, or perhaps even a startled, searing rage.

But instead, Mai glances down at the pages, looking thoughtful.

'She was a kitsune, wasn't she?' she asks and Miyabi has to choke down her rage at the way Mai says it, deliberately gentling her tone, as if she were talking to someone sickly. 'She was kin, to you, maybe? Or maybe I'd get mad if you said humans were as bad as one you'd read about in a story.'

Miyabi sighs. 'Tamamo was sister to us all,' she says quietly, because at least Mai is willing to listen. 'She was a reminder of what can happen if we overstretch ourselves. But she was different too. Adopted and raised by humans, is it any wonder that she respected human values? How can we blame her for wanting vengeance, because a bad decision by the emperor cost her human father his life? You'll notice how that was left out in the version you read.'

Mai gasps. But her cheeks flush and in her eyes dance sparks, quick, cheap shots of light from the candle flames, made vibrant from her exhilaration. She looks back at the illustration of the Tamamo with hunger in her expression.

'If that's the case, then she's greater than I thought she was,' she whispers reverently. 'Avenging a family member...and she didn't care how many people she angered to do it!'

'She failed,' Miyabi reminds her. 'And that failure cost her, her life.'

But she knows the words are useless. Mai has that look again, the look Youkai wear before they lose themselves to pleasure. It has caught her, the thought of a woman who used her femininity as a weapon, who dressed herself as though preparing for a courtship instead of an assassination. Miyabi wonders if Mai wants to grow up into a similar shape.

But such a path is not easy. And Miyabi is unsure whether she wishes to tread down it with her.

* * *

So reading, hearing Mai sometimes read to her, is not always fun. But fortunetelling, perhaps, is.

Yes, Miyabi prefers it by far when Mai pulls back her sleeves and holds a wind chime up to the light. It hovers in front of her face, a distant fairy that distorts the shape of her eyes as Miyabi stares back through the glass towards her. It's a tiny window, one that curves and offers hardly enough noise to be called a song, but it still opens up the way to the future.

Mai can make it move, can focus and cause the silver strands within it to knock together and produce a bell-like reverberation that throws words into her mind like a poem.

'You've spent your life crushing down small things, just because you can,' Mai told her, the first time she told Miyabi her fortune. 'Now you have to learn to step back and let it grow; learn to become a part of something bigger than yourself.'

Then she made a face. 'Useless,' she muttered sullenly, though there was a curious haze of pink across her face, and her eyes became fixed on her knees, rather than the wind chime she still held suspended by her hand.

Miyabi is still not sure why Mai tells so many lies. Or why she forces herself to say things that deep down, she doesn't really mean. She's like those tiny creatures that hoist themselves up into shells when they're frightened, making armour out of the skeleton they're forced to wear on the outside. But Mai isn't a snail. And her bones remain tightly wedged under her skin.

But still, Miyabi knows they could break. She could break them. She's a little unsure when that thought started to frighten her so.

* * *

Mai is not always a kind master. Sometimes, when her mother wavers in the corridors like a spirit unsure of what to haunt, Mai will snap, demand food from Miyabi like a servant.

'Fetch me a plum,' she will say, or, 'grab me some strawberries and be quick about it!'

Miyabi will watch her fingers pluck at the fruit, her nails tightening against the skin until they burst through the flesh and stain her hand with the juice inside. And it runs, red into purple, like blood darkening her fingertips. Mai's hands are small, lacking the claws of a youkai, but still, when she inspects them, they seem to curve cruelly, as though in imitation of one.

Miyabi resents this, this stupid show of power, a lie that empathesis, the strength of a soul through a body that cannot help but give way to it. It does not comfort her at all, to imagine the eventual dirt and bone Mai will succumb to, even as her mother falls into the arms of another would—be suitor like a corpse and Mai scowl enlarges, alongside her temper. On those days, somehow Miyabi is not quick enough, fast enough to deliver fruit into her hands and Mai twists her name through her mouth with childish scorn, demanding her to lock herself up in the outer-shed as punishment.

In the dark, among the tight rolls of scrolls, Miyabi will pretend she is enclosed within her den, with the scent and shapes of leaves cluttering the entrance in half-moon curls. The crisp sound of paper, as her claws drift along the edges, will serve as a poor substitute in the illusion she has placed herself in, but it leaves her satisfied, in a way picturing Mai in trouble does not.

Mai will not apologise afterwards. And Miyabi will not expect one. That does not mean, however, that she does not desire one.

But on one such day, her patience falters.

'I have punished humans for lesser sins than yours,' she hisses, her fur dripping with the rain that barraged her after Mai had decided to let her free.

'Sin?' Mai looks haunty, outraged, indignant. Three forms of human rage, that Miyabi knows Mai will not keep inside. 'What sin? The sin of using the name-bond to command you? Just because it's difficult for you to handle, doesn't mean it's wrong for me to use it!'

Miyabi laughs, a harsh dry chuckle, that rolls through her mouth like the leaves she misses back home. 'You think I don't know what you did?' she chides gently. 'Oh Mai...I have seen the way some of the villagers, the ones who do not fawn on you, glare at you when others do not look. They hold murder in their hearts for you. It's in their very postures; in that way youkai and humans are not so different. It is love, or the loss of it, that moves people into such hate.'

The anger flees from Mai's face and abruptly, she goes very, very white.

Miyabi scuffles a little closer, just enough to let her breath lie against the line of Mai's cheek, to stir her hair like wind.

'Mai,' she breathes. 'You have let me talk to people here. That is a very foolish thing to do. It makes it easier to unearth your secrets, to learn the names of the dead.' She pauses, and then, carefully, with all the roughness of a cub, she mutters, 'including the name you have given to another, to me, of the one you wished to keep here.'

'SHUT UP!' Mai whirls away, hair slashing against Miyabi's face like the quick-fire strike of a snake. 'SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!'

Miyabi reaches out, grabbing Mai's wrist as her free hand stretches for the girl's mouth. But Mai bites down hard on her questing fingers, struggling against the sleek tails that burst out from under the lines of Miyabi's kimono and wrap around her chest, thicker and tighter than the knot of her obi. Miyabi grunts, but human teeth are blunt, are to youkai what stones are to rocks. And she holds fast. Not a word will drop from Mai's lips.

'Peace,' she says. 'You should know better than to know I will hurt you. Think Mai. You have read tales of my kind, you know how we avenge ourselves against the humans we feel have wronged us. If I wished, I could have already crept into your body, made you shiver with sickness, see into a world that is not there. I may even have killed you.'

Her tails tighten, not enough to hurt but to threaten. Mai chokes, her tongue battling feebly against the invading fingertips and Miyabi sighs, telling her claws to shorten and resemble the fragile thinness of human nails. She has no wish for Mai's blood to spill, to thread through her mouth as her tongue comes apart.

'Listen,' she says empathetically. 'I understand throwing others aside to save someone precious. It makes perfect sense. What I can't understand is why you thought it would work. Only a dark spirit would demand such a massive sacrifice and even then, they rarely have the power to make good on their deals. The only one who might have listened, who might have granted your request is Taizanfukun-sama. And he would never have approved of this bloodbath. Why did you not plead your case to him, back before your soul was unblemished?'

Throughout her speech Mai had been tightening in on herself, rolling forward and squeezing her chest against Miyabi's tails as though in parody of a hug. But, upon her last word, she freezing, her muscles like dried snow against the rolls of furs that encompasses her. Hesitantly, Miyabi pulls them away , her fingers falling out of Mai's mouth with a wet slop.

Mai swallows, before she can get her throat to work. 'Unblemished?'

'Well...yes.' Something is screaming t her, warning not to finish. But Miyabi has become weak to Mai's curiosity, to the way her mind seeks to fill in the holes no human can provide for her. 'Taizanfukun-sama sometimes resurrects the dead in exchange for a single unblemished soul, free of any sin.'

Mai starts to shake. Her teeth chatter. And then piteously, like the snapping of a spine, a wail breaks out of her mouth.

Miyabi pulls her close, unsure if she has made a terrible mistake.


	2. Chapter 2

Mai has known two things since her sister died: one, that she has to get stronger. And two: that she will always hate Kantarou Ichinomiya.

But today that has been washed aside, and now she knows only one thing: that she must hate herself.

* * *

Mai wakes from a nightmare, ones that holds Miyabi's eyes and mouth and whispers, 'I love you, sister.' She stares down at the sheets tangled round her ankles and shudders as the moonlight paints them white and ephemeral, like a butterfly's wing. They slide off her feet at an angled slant, much like the way her sister's robes once sloped off her shoulders and onto the floor, pooling into a tucked weave of ripples as though to announce her final resting place. Angerily, Mai kicks the offending sheets off.

She glances down, at the knot of fingers that hold her own. The other Miyabi is here, the one who does not share a single similarity with the old one; not her passivity, her sickness or her perchance for holding human secrets. But perhaps, they share the same root of kindness, running like a collection of veins inside them.

Mai scowls heavily at the thought and yanks her hand free, as gently as she can. Then she climbs out of bed.

Kindness did not save the first Miyabi, the real Miyabi. But then, neither did cruelty. And Mai no longer knows what she's been left with instead.

* * *

'Mother.' She does not knock on the door, does not bend her head when she walks through. Her eyes do not even narrow to see the man that lies beside her, his arm thrown hazardously over the sheets in a chain of flesh that tugs her mother under. Under the shadows of night, his skin is impossibly blue, like a drowned, dead thing.

'M-Mai!' Her mother is shocked, appalled, her face frozen in trepidation of the brewing anger she expects to see form on Mai's brow. But this time, she will be in for a long wait.

'Did you know?' Mai asks. 'When Kantarou refused to summon Taizanfukun, did you know why?'

Her mother closes her eyes.

'Did you know?' Mai demands.

'I guessed,' her mother whispered. 'Ichinomiya-sensai, did not seem the type to deny a request without good reason. So I researched afterwards.'

Mai swallows the lump in her throat. 'What a pity,' she sneers, 'that you could not have known the truth sooner. You could have saved the nicer, better daughter first, rather than have been left with the murderess.'

'Mai!' her mother is thin-lipped now, fighting against the arm that lies heavy against her waist. She tugs it off with a snarl, ignoring the mumbled protests from her half-awake lover as Mai steps back, trembling at the sudden fury that sparks her mother's eyes back to life. Her mother kicks her way out of bed, not even stopping to apologise for the bruises she presses against her struggling lover's skin and walks towards her daughter, her gaze sharpening into a gleam that resembles an owl, almost brazen in the way it draws in light.

She stops before her daughter, casually displaying the naked curves that will one day fully mark out her daughter's own ascension into maturity. And for a moment, for Mai, it is like looking into the future and being given a glimpse of the possibility that is to come and shape her bones. Then her mother trembles, falling to her knees and sweeping Mai into a hug, her elbows arching out like armoured spurs, as though to push the night away.

'Don't talk like that,' she mumbles, her strength abruptly flying out of her limbs as she leans forward, pressing her weight against her daughter's neck. 'I could never have chosen between you two. No mother could. I would have offered my life a thousand times to Taizanfukun-sama for either of you but he has a stern policy on what constitutes as pure. And I have twisted many hearts, broken many vows in order to get where I am today and I know he would not have taken me.'

Mai does not know how to answer, how to wrap her arms up, beneath the spurs of her mother's elbows and offer the armour of her warm flesh in return. It's been so long, since she sought her mother and her arms, that she feels as though she doesn't know how to be a daughter any more.

Dimly, she registers a snort.

'Che, it's your miko brat.' The man yawns, his mouth a cavern of teeth still imprinted with the stain of wine from last night's supper. Even from here, Mai fancies she can spot the splinter of fish bone worked in between his gums. 'Isn't she a bit old to sleep with her mother anymore? Send her away.'

Suddenly, it's all too easy for Mai to hoop her arms round her mother's waist.

'Mother,' she says, steadfastly ignoring the white grazes against her mother's hips, ones that cling to her skin like scars to depict the fine trail of human nails. 'You aren't really going to marry that man, are you?'

Her mother's arms tighten around her. 'Not if you don't want me too.'

* * *

Mai has lived with hate inside her heart for a long time. A part of this has been devoted to daydreams involving Kantarou, picturing his face slack with surprise as she orders Miyabi's claws into his stomach.

Now, though...now...

She heaves her head into her hands. Seconds later, she feels fingers stroking against her neck, reaching up into her hair to run small claws around the curved bulge of her skull.

She groans.

'Miyabi, stop that. What are you still doing here anyway? My mother will have a fit if she knew you had stayed the night.'

The weight lifts from her neck, though not completely, and she feels the shadow of Miyabi's palm stretched over her skin, the expectant heaviness of that hand hovering next to the fine human hairs that litter her neck.

'I am here because I have caused you sadness,' says the kitsune softly. 'There is no real cure for such thing. And as to your mother...well, it is not her words I have to fear.'

Mai lets out a grim, humourless smile.

'No, I suppose it isn't, is it?'

'Perhaps...'

And then there is a rush of air, a faint whoosh of noise that brushes against the floorboards to sweep like the bristles of a brush across wood. And then fur nuzzles at Mai's ankles, a wet nose, not unlike a dogs pushing at her toes. Mai peers through her fingers to see a six tailed fox curling round her feet like a large cat, its fur burnt into a shade of amber that resembles the autumn more than it does the glow of reshaped metals.

'Huh,' she comments. 'I haven't seen you in this form for quite a while.'

Miyabi cracks an eye open at her, an of orb gold that smokes like brushwood set alight.

Pretty, thinks Mai, but does not word the thought aloud. Instead her fingers lean down to stroke.

* * *

Mai does not die. Does not despair. Though of course, that does not mean that she does not want to. She spares a fleeting thought to what new form her sister might find herself wrapped inside, and what new life her soul might have floated upon. But she has no way to determine where she is the world, no real clue to follow. Either way, it is probably a prettier existence than she, herself, can hope to stumble upon in her next life.

Miyabi is still there to correct her, to sniff at books and the distorted histories they leave behind. And when Mai is tried, stumbling through the dark, lights flicker in front of her, little goblin globes of blue light that twitch and flutter, their patterns of light caught between the weaving dance of fireflies and the reckless thrust of flames.

'Foxfire' says Mai, trying not to sound too reverent. 'I never thought I would see such a thing.'

She almost reaches out to touch, but Miyabi's hand on her wrist stops her.

'No,' the kitsune tells her. 'It is not meant for human hands.'

Surprisingly, Mai feels herself obey.

Life continues. The villagers still bow and scrape. Her mother sometimes still appears like a ghost. But now she immerses herself more fully into the life that surrounds them, asking her daughter questions over dinner, and even once, lying a tentative hand against Miyabi's head.

Mai still hates herself. But, she resolves to push herself forwards, outwards. To grow because Miyabi, the first one, the one she loved above all else, cannot.

* * *

Years later, she pushes a ghost out of an old man with nothing but her words and the quivering fox form of Miyabi to sustain her shaking legs. Afterwards, she stumbles out into the sunlight, her sleeves rattling with the old man's gratitude, packaged sweets and the relics of his dead wife's jewellery box clattering against her wrists.

Here she huffs, pushing some onto the newly formed hands of Miyabi as she uncurls from a puff of smoke. 'Take some. I can't possibly carry all this by myself.'

But Miyabi, much to her rage, lets the sweets fall through her fingers, allowing their jelly to smudge into the dirt. Ignoring her master's indignant squawk, the kitsune growls, her eyes narrowing into sharp beads of yellow.

'Ogre,' she rumbles.

'Hey!' exclaims a horribly familiar voice. It rushes into Mai's ears and with it, comes all her lingering annoyance. 'That's incredibly rude!'

Miyabi huffs and growls at Kantarou with all the perturbed air of someone who is unsure, but not confident enough to make a judgement either way. Kantarou, for his part, merely eyes her with a thin-lined, appreciative smile.

Mai feels her hackles rise. She knows that look. She's seen men eye up her mother with the same calculating eyes. The only difference between them and Kantarou is there is no lust lurking in his scarlet gaze.

'Mmm,' he says thoughtfully. 'That's a very nice friend you've there. You really have grown into a strong onmyouji. Just as I knew you would.'

That last line is said with a little too smugness for Mai's liking so she sighs and straightens her spine, well aware of how undignified she must look, weighed down with her latest treasure trove of sweets and copper bangles. She spares a thought for where Haruka must be, but then realises, that if he's anything like Miyabi, he can't be too far away. Either way, it doesn't matter. She's long since lost the taste for Kantarou's blood. Though, deep down, she still thirsts for something.

'Back off,' she sneers, 'this job was mine. You're too late, old man.'

Kantarou frowns. 'Ouch. I see that attitude is as pleasant as ever.'

Mai tosses her hair to one side, as best as she can manage with her arm bent and weighed down.

'Tough luck.' She says. 'It keeps me from getting pulled into the thrall of people like you.'

There definitely is a sparkle of amusement in his eyes this time.

'I take it that means no offer of marriage is on the table this time?'

For a moment she sees red. Then she fights it down, along with the scattering of pride that resurfaces with the memory of her thirteen year old self, pale and looking down into a face she draped over with her hair, the black nestling into his white like a macabre wedding shroud.

'You couldn't afford it,' she manages. 'I'm high maintenance; it would take more than you've got to keep me.'

He looks at her for a moment and then, unexpectedly softens, his face opening up into that wide, teenage-like cherubness that she suspects others more foolhardy than her have been drawn into.

'You've certainly grown up, Mai,' he congratulates, 'well done.' Then he smirks wryly. 'I could probably stand to learn something from you...'

But Mai doesn't care to listen to his problems. She shoves past him rudely, Miyabi trailing in her wake.

'Make way,' she tells him firmly, 'the next generation is coming through.'

Whether it's a warning or simply a statement of fact, she doesn't quite know. But she is here, while Miyabi, her sister is not. So, as far as she is concerned, the world will just have to buckle under her and the weaker power it left her with. It's what it owes her after all.

'Who was that? ' Miyabi asks her in a hushed voice. 'He smells...not quite right.'

Mai smiles, and wonders if her bitterness is showing. 'Just another person who couldn't save my sister,' she says.

* * *

Mai isn't kind. She hates too easily and lets anger stir her, rush her into a course of action she can't take back. She suspects that even as she ages, this will not change.

Another thing that will not change are the Miyabis, both of them. Her sister will stay in her memory, forever young, too young, while the youkai at her side will breathe, her beauty intact through the centuries in the same way a statue should be. Mai is not sure she is kind enough to take the curse of her sister's name away from her. But perhaps one day, she will.

But for now she reads. And works. And wonders how this will shape her.

* * *

It's done! I hope. I pray.

I know Mai might not be the most popular character in this series, but something about her story really touched me, and I guess I wanted to offer her something more. Like the hope, or the chance at least, of rebuilding herself without her twin by her side.

Or maybe I just have a thing for female charcaters who do terrible things whilst holding sympathetic motivations behind them, motivations which, while they don't justify anything, don't render their circumstances completely void and inert either. Something which Kantarou himself seems to understand.


End file.
